CHAPTER V.

At this Mrs. Temple shook her head in a manner expressing perfect despair. The problem whether Throckmorton should be admitted within the doors of Barn Elms was a mere nothing compared with this. Both of them firmly believed in a personal devil; and Temple Freke, with his extravagance, his vices, his unprincipled behavior, stood for Satan himself. This Freke was very unlike the conservative, home-keeping type of a gentleman that prevailed in Virginia. He was born and brought up in Louisiana, and was fifteen years old when, by the death of his father, General Temple became his guardian, and he was brought to Barn Elms to lead the staid Beverley into all sorts of scrapes, and to torment General Temple’s honest soul almost to madness. The elder Freke, perhaps, knowing the boy’s disposition, had made General Temple’s guardianship to extend until Temple Freke’s twenty-fifth birthday.

Of the horrors of that guardianship, nobody but the kind and simple-hearted general could tell—of Freke’s extravagance, of his gambling and betting and drinking, and one frightful scene, when Freke, with a loaded pistol in his hand, swore that, unless a certain debt of honor was paid, he would kill himself on the spot; and General Temple, who was not easily frightened, promptly paid it, with the conviction that the young fellow was quite capable of carrying out the threat. Immediately after this, General Temple shipped him off to Europe, but apparently it made bad worse. For six whole years was General Temple commanding, entreating, praying, and wheedling to get Freke back to Virginia. It was true, he might have cut off supplies, but Freke made no bones of saying that, if he couldn’t get his own money, he would contrive to get somebody else’s; so the poor general, with groans and moans, would cash Freke’s drafts on him as long as money could be screwed out of the Louisiana sugar plantations to do it with.

But, as Mrs. Temple often said, Freke was unquestionably a gentleman; he was mild-mannered to a degree, and his very impertinences were brought out with a diffidence that frequently hoodwinked General Temple. He was not nearly so handsome as Beverley, being much shorter and sandy-haired, in contrast with Beverley’s blonde beauty; but Mrs. Temple always felt in the old days, with a little pang of jealousy, that this ordinary-looking boy, with his exquisite manners—not the least affected or effeminate, but simply the perfection of personal bearing—could put Beverley at a disadvantage. The two had little in common, and had never met after their school-days, when General Temple, in the innocence of his heart, had sent Freke abroad, to reform, until the very time of Beverley’s death. Freke, whose courage was as flawless in its way as General Temple’s, had come home during the war and enlisted in the Southern army. A strange fate had placed him close to Beverley when he was killed. He had held Beverley’s dying hand, and to him were intrusted the last messages to the mother and the young wife, who waited and prayed at Barn Elms. Nothing on earth but this could have brought Mrs. Temple to tolerate Freke at all, after the sensational career which had begun with the pistol scene. Moreover, to increase the abnormal conditions about this unregenerate being, as the Temples considered him, he was perfectly irresistible. How it was, General Temple gloomily declared, he didn’t know, but Freke had the most extraordinary way of insinuating himself into the good graces of both men and women—not by any affectation of goodness, for there was a frankness about his wickedness that was peculiarly appalling to General Temple. Freke was no handsomer as a man than as a boy; he had been steadily making ducks and drakes of his fortune since he was twenty-five; yet, somehow, Freke always seemed to have a plenty of friends, solely by the charm of his personality. The most serious escapade that had come to General Temple’s knowledge since Freke was of age was his running away with a Cuban girl in New Orleans, and afterward getting a divorce by some hocus-pocus, and thereafter, with serene confidence, he bore himself as an unmarried man. Now, divorce was practically unknown in that old part of Virginia, and the Temples regarded it as in the category with murder and arson; so that this final iniquity of Freke’s would have quite put him beyond the pale, but for those hours he spent kneeling on the ground with the dying Beverley.

General Temple had a sort of Arab hospitality that would not have begrudged itself to the Evil One himself, and to tell Freke that he was not welcome under the roof of Barn Elms, where his grandfather and his grandfather’s father had lived, was an enormity of which he was not capable. And Mrs. Temple was no manner of use to him in the case. In vain he tried to shuffle the decision off on her. Mrs. Temple would not accept it. Like the general, she sighed and groaned, and turned it over in her mind; but always came back that picture of Beverley lying bleeding and dying, and Freke risking his life to stay by him. So at last, after a week of mutual misery, one night, in the privacy of the “charmber,” Mrs. Temple, watching the general stalking up and down during one of his fits of midnight restlessness, said, tremulously:

“My love, we must let Freke come. We can not refuse it—for—for Beverley’s sake.”

So the next morning a letter was dispatched to Freke, written by General Temple with considerably less cordiality than usual, and very feeble rhetorically, expressing the pleasure his uncle and aunt felt at the prospect of a visit from their nephew.

The next day, as soon as the direful news of his coming was made known to Jacqueline, she rushed off, as she always did, to give Judith the startling information.

Judith heard it with a strange feeling of repulsion, which she at first imagined was that infinite disapproval she felt for Freke; but, if he came, all of that terrible story about Beverley would have to be told over. Judith had not yet come to a clear understanding of herself, but she had begun to shrink from that dwelling on Beverley which seemed to give Mrs. Temple such exquisite comfort.

“Everything that looked at Freke fell in love with him,” announced Jacqueline. “Of course, he is as handsome as a dream—something like Mr. Morford, I dare say.”

There were two or three faded photographs of him at Barn Elms, and none of them gave the idea of great beauty; but photographs in those days were not very artistic reproductions.

Judith laughed a little uneasily.

“I wish he wern’t coming, Jacky,” she said. “He is too—too startling a person for quiet people like ourselves. There is one comfort, though: he will soon get tired of us.”

Within a week or two came a very well-expressed letter from Freke, thanking his uncle and aunt for their hospitable invitation, and saying that on a certain day he would land from the river steamer at Oak Point. Jacqueline was immensely taken with the letter, which was written on paper the like of which she had never seen before, and was sealed with a crest.

Two immense trunks arrived in advance of the expected visitor. Mrs. Sherrard happened to be at Barn Elms when the luggage appeared. Mrs. Temple’s face expressed her misery.

“Jane, you have my sympathy. A more unmitigated scamp than Freke doesn’t live,” was Mrs. Sherrard’s remark.

“Kitty,” feebly protested Mrs. Temple, “he is my husband’s nephew.”

“The more’s the pity.”

As a rule, the reputation of incalculable wickedness hurts nobody, in the opinion of the very young. The more Mrs. Temple preached and warned, holding on to that one saving clause, Freke’s devotion to Beverley in his dying hours, the more attractive he seemed to Jacqueline. At last one afternoon, when the carriage returned from Oak Point Landing with the much-talked-of Freke, Jacqueline, who had been curling her hair and prinking all day for the visitor, came down into the drawing-room, and the expression of acute disappointment on her face said loudly:

“Is this all?”

For Freke was neither surpassingly handsome nor any of the superlative things Jacqueline had fondly imagined him to be. He was not even as handsome as Throckmorton, and Jacqueline thought him no beauty. Freke was under middle height, and his hair was as sandy as of old, and not too abundant. His features were ordinary; and Jacqueline, not being a physiognomist, did not take in the piercing expression, the firmness and intelligence that redeemed them from commonplaceness. He did look unmistakably the gentleman, Jacqueline grudgingly admitted. This the adorable, the irresistible, the—But Jacqueline was too disgusted to continue.

Freke, who read Jacqueline like an open book, and suspected the advance impression she had received, could hardly keep from laughing out aloud at the girl’s air and manner. He talked a little to her, somewhat more to Judith, but chiefly to Mrs. Temple.

It was late in the afternoon when he had arrived, and tea was soon announced. Directly it was over, Mrs. Temple marshaled a solemn procession into “the charmber” to hear Freke’s description of Beverley’s last hours. She went first with Judith, followed by Freke and General Temple. Mrs. Temple had tried to get Jacqueline to come, too, but Jacqueline, who had a horror of weeping and tragedies, begged off; and Mrs. Temple, who really attached but little importance to the girl at any time, did not press the point. The door of the room remained closed for two hours. Jacqueline, who had got tired of Delilah’s company and the cat’s, went up-stairs early, but not to bed. She waited until she heard Judith’s door open, and then went and knocked timidly at the door.

“Come in,” said Judith, in an unfamiliar voice. Judith was sitting before her dressing-table, and had already begun to unbraid her long, rich hair. But her eyes were fixed with a hard, staring gaze on her own image in the glass. The mother had wept at Freke’s recital; the widow had remained pale, tearless, and turning over in her troubled mind the immaturity, the transitoriness of that first girlish love-affair that had resulted, as so few first loves do, in a sudden marriage—a quick widowhood. And she had a terrifying sense that she had betrayed herself to Freke. There was one particular point in the narrative, when he described how the dead man had got his death-wound. Beverley had run across a small body of Federal cavalrymen, himself with only an advance guard, and, à la General Temple, had immediately dashed at them, as if a cavalry scrimmage would affect one iota the great fight that was impending the next day. Beverley himself had engaged in a hand-to-hand tussle with a Federal officer—both of them had rolled off their horses, and the struggle between them was more like Indian warfare than civilized warfare—and Freke described, with cruel particularity, how the two men fought in the underbrush, and crushed the wild rose and hawthorn bushes, each one trying vainly to draw his pistol—and at last a shot rang out, and Beverley turned over on his face with a wild shriek and a death-wound. The Federal officer had got his arm entangled in his bridle-reins, and Freke thought every moment the excited horse would trample the wounded man to death; and then, a squad of Confederates coming up, the Federals had made off, the officer mounting his horse and getting out of the way with nothing worse than a few bruises. All the time he was telling this he was eying Judith, who did not shed a single tear. Mrs. Temple wept torrents, and even so did General Temple. For poor Judith, whose reading of Freke was not less keen than his reading of her, it was misery enough to feel that, after all, her widowhood was not very real, and that the mourning, the entire giving up of the world, the devotion to Beverley’s parents, was, in some sort, a reparation; but that it should escape her—for Judith with the eagerness to make amends, of a generous nature, had readily adopted Mrs. Temple’s view—that it was a crime not to mourn for Beverley.

Jacqueline slipped down on her knees beside Judith, and, nodding her head, gravely said:

“Mamma didn’t get me into the room. Ah, Judy, dear, why won’t they let us forget him—”

“Jacqueline!” cried Judith, turning a pale, shocked face on her.

“I say,” persisted Jacqueline, who had one of her sudden fits of courage, “why do they trouble us to remember him? I hardly knew him; he was always off at college, and then in the war; why won’t they let us mourn decently for him? And then—and then—everybody wants to forget griefs. I do.”

Judith rose and shook her off impatiently. “I wish Temple Freke had never come here,” she said.

“I do, too,” answered Jacqueline, getting up. “I am afraid of him. O Judith, what two poor creatures are we!”

“I know I am,” suddenly cried Judith, breaking into a storm of tears. “I know there is no peace for me anywhere!—” Judith stopped as suddenly as she had begun. How could she put it in words, the ghastliness of this perpetual reminder of that which in her heart she longed to forget—this feeling that had been growing on her for so long, that she ought to feel more remorse for marrying Beverley Temple than grief at losing him—that all this solemn mourning for him was like those state funerals, where there is a great service, a catafalque, a coffin, mourners—everything except a corpse? And to her candid soul how wicked, heartless, and unnatural it seemed! Jacqueline’s eyes, so full of meaning and fixed on her, troubled her. She got up after a minute and walked over to the window. The red glow of the fire and the dim candle-light did not prevent her from seeing clearly into the moonlight night. She drew the old-fashioned white curtains apart and looked out. The somber trees loomed large and black, but up on the hill, a quarter of a mile away, the light from Millenbeck gleamed cheerfully. From two windows on the lower floor and two on the upper, as well as the great fan- and side-lights of the hall-door, a ruddy glare streamed steadily. Presently Jacqueline came and stood by Judith, timidly.

“Do you know,” she said, “it seems queer that three strangers should come into our lonely lives—in this quiet life here? And the one I like—the one I like best—is Jack Throckmorton. I can’t talk to the others.”

Judith, who had got back a little of her composure, smiled at this.

“You talked away fast enough with Major Throckmorton.”

“Oh, yes, but I didn’t feel at home with him. Jack and I understand each other. I know what he means when he talks to me. I don’t always understand Major Throckmorton. Judith, is my cousin Freke a very wicked man?”

“So people say,” replied Judith in a subdued voice, which had not altogether overcome its agitation.

“He isn’t handsome enough to be very—very attractive,” said Jacqueline after a pause.

But the rule of contrary seemed to suddenly prevail at Barn Elms then. Within a week everybody in the house had succumbed more or less to Freke’s charm. General Temple found him invaluable in the preparation of the History of Temple’s Brigade; and Freke, who had a store of military knowledge among his great fund of general information, easily persuaded the general that he was a military historian of the first order. When the general began his evening harangues, Freke always had an example pat of a certain occasion when Prince Eugene, or the Duke of Marlborough, or some equally distinguished leader had successfully pursued General Temple’s tactics. All this General Temple laboriously transcribed in his manuscript. Judith, who very much doubted whether Freke were not making it up as he went along, had her suspicions confirmed when Freke would occasionally turn his expressive face on her and actually wink with appreciation of the general’s simplicity. Judith was indignant, but she could not help laughing at Freke’s genuine humor. Mrs. Temple showed her regard for the returned prodigal by taking him into the “charmber” one day and reasoning in a motherly way upon Freke’s duty to return to his wife. Judith was astounded after a while to hear Mrs. Temple’s gentle but intense laughter making itself heard outside the room. Freke, with the most good-natured manner in the world, sitting in the rush-bottomed chair, with one foot over his knee, began to tell Mrs. Temple some of his marital experiences with his Julia. Mrs. Temple at first put on her severest frown and fairly groaned aloud at his declaration that he didn’t know whether he was married or not in Virginia, as his divorce was got in one of the Northwestern States; but, divorce or no divorce, he wouldn’t tempt Fate again in another matrimonial venture even with a creature as beautiful as Helen, as wise as Portia, and with a million in her own right. Then he began to tell of the adventures between Julia and himself which had led to their separation, winding up with a description of their final scene, when Julia threw a dish at him and he in turn threw a bucket of ice-water over Julia. Before this, though, Mrs. Temple’s laughter had been heard. Freke issued from the room the picture of innocence, and at peace with himself and all the world. Mrs. Temple, on the contrary, was an image of guilt. Never had she before in her life been beguiled from a moral lecture into unseemly laughter—and laughter on such a subject! Mrs. Temple’s conscience rose up and fought her, and she began to think that all her moral foundation was tottering.

Surprises were the order of the day. One night, just after family prayers, when the gout, and the doubt whether anybody at all was to be saved, had caused General Temple to make a more pessimistic, vociferous, and grewsome prayer than usual, in which he called the Deity to account for so grievously afflicting the Temple family, Freke, whom Judith had caught smiling in the midst of General Temple’s most telling periods, quietly announced that he had that day bought Wareham, a place within two miles of Barn Elms.

It was not much of a place, being at most about three hundred acres, with a small, untenanted house on it—and property went for a song, anyhow, in that part of the world—but, nevertheless, the news was paralyzing to General and Mrs. Temple. Judith, who was developing a certain dislike and distrust of Freke that grew daily, could hardly forbear laughing at the mute horror of General and Mrs. Temple over this unlooked-for news. Freke went on to say that a very little would make the place habitable for him, and he liked the fishing and shooting to be had—especially the shooting, as the birds had had four years’ rest during the war. Then he said good-night pleasantly, and went off to bed.

“This is the dev—I mean this is most unfortunate, my love,” remarked General Temple, dismally, to Mrs. Temple, at two o’clock in the morning following this, as he paraded up and down the “charmber,” declaiming against Freke’s iniquities.

Next day, Mrs. Sherrard came over, and the direful news was communicated to her by Mrs. Temple, with a very long face. Mrs. Sherrard’s eyes danced.

“Now you’ll know what it is to have a nephew that one would like to be entirely unlike what he is. That’s my trouble with Edmund Morford. You know, I hate a humbug—and Edmund is a good soul, but a dreadful humbug.”

“Katharine!” exclaimed Mrs. Temple. “A minister of the gospel—”

“Go along, Jane Temple! You have no eyes in your head where ministers of the gospel are concerned. Edmund is perfectly harmless—that’s one comfort.”

“I wish I could say the same of Temple Freke,” Mrs. Temple rejoined, dolefully.

It would be a week or two yet before Freke could take possession of Wareham. Some beds and tables and sheets and towels had to be procured, and meanwhile he stayed on at Barn Elms. It would not have taken a very astute person to see what the charm was. It was Judith.

When the knowledge first came to these two people—to Judith, that Freke’s eyes followed her continually; that, as if by some power beyond his will, his chair was always next hers, his ear always alert to catch her lightest word—to Freke, that this young country-woman, with her spirited, expressive face, her untutored singing—for music was one of his weak points, or strong ones, as the case might be—her gentle sarcasm when he essayed a little sentiment, pretty and tender enough to please a woman who knew twice as much as she; that at first sight, without an effort, she had conquered his bold spirit—it is hard to say which was the most vexed and disgusted. Judith found it easy enough to play the inconsolable widow where a man who aroused a positive antagonism like Freke was concerned, and denounced him in her own mind as a wretch for daring to fall in love with her. And Freke—after New York women and Creole women, French, Spanish, Russian, English, and Italian women—to have been loved and petted, and virtually made free of women’s hearts; that this unsophisticated Virginia girl, who had never seen six men in her life, should simply take him off his feet, and that, without knowing it—was simply infuriating. In the privacy of his bedroom, as he smoked his last cigar before turning in, he swore at himself with a self-deprecation that was thoroughly genuine. What did he want to marry again for, anyway? Hadn’t he had all he wanted of that pastime? And, of course, being a divorced man, Judith would see him chopped into little pieces before she would marry him—and then the staggering thought that, even if he were not divorced, the odds were against her marrying him at all—it was altogether maddening. But he did not lose his head completely. Judith’s indifference—nay, dislike—saved to him his discretion. But had she warmed to him for one little moment—Freke, in thinking over this sweet impossibility, lay back in his chair and watched the smoke curling upward, and was lost in a delicious reverie—when suddenly, the utter preposterousness of it came to him, and he threw the cigar into the fire with a savage energy that nearly wrenched his arm off. No, the little devil—for he was not choice of epithets in regard to this woman—would throw him away with as little conscience and remorse as he threw that cigar away! Like all men of many love-affairs, he regarded love-making as an æsthetic amusement; and while it was absolutely necessary for its perfection that the woman should be desperately in earnest—for Freke did not mind a tragic tinge being given to the matter—it was nonsense for a man to permit himself to be drawn into heroics—and yet—but for the indifference of this girl, who was always half laughing at him—he would not answer for any folly he might commit.

Then there was Jacqueline. She exactly suited him as a victim to his charms, sardonically expressing it to himself. She, too, was not particularly impressed with him as yet, but that was due to her ignorance. He could easily enlighten her, and she would be led like a slave by him; he could make her believe anything. So, in default of Judith, he might as well amuse himself with Jacqueline; and, by resolutely concealing his gigantic folly, he would in the end overcome it. But he felt like a man who, having a head to stand champagne and brandy and absinthe and every other intoxication, comes across something that looks as harmless as water, but which sets his brain on fire and makes him a madman.

The general and Mrs. Temple saw nothing; a man might have made love to Judith and have run away with her under their very noses before they would have realized that it was possible for any man to dare falling in love with Beverley’s widow; and if Jacqueline’s eyes saw anything, she kept it wisely to herself.

Freke certainly added a new and picturesque element to their lives; even Judith could not deny that, although she habitually denied Freke the possession of any of the graces as well as the virtues. But that Freke was a wonderful, a gifted, a fascinating talker, she was forced to admit. His conversation was quite different from Throckmorton’s manly plainness of speech, who, with more brains than Freke, had not them as readily soluble in talk. Judith was acute enough to see the difference between the two men—one the man of conversation, and the other the man of action. Throckmorton knew many things, and one thing surpassingly well—his profession. Freke excelled in conversation; what he knew was imposing, but what he could do was not. However, he had not only traveled, but he had observed as well as read. He never made himself the hero of his own stories; and there was a sparkle in his eyes, an animation that gave a deeper tone to his voice, and Judith, in her dull and colorless life, could not but feel the charm of it. Nevertheless, it was not all charm. Judith felt as strongly as ever the incongruity of Freke with his surroundings.

So, some days more passed. Judith found that in finesse she was no match for Freke. Indifferent to him as she might be, he could always place himself where he wanted—he managed to have a great deal more of her society than she would willingly have given him; but she reasoned shrewdly with herself—women being naturally clever in these things: “He will soon give it up. The game is not worth the candle.” And so it proved; for in a little while he began to shadow Jacqueline, and Jacqueline succumbed like a bird to the charmer. If Freke was present, Jacqueline, who was wont to be impatient when not noticed, would sit quite quietly by her sister-in-law’s side, sewing demurely, or walk beside her gravely, not opening her mouth but listening intently, as her changing color showed. One day, when Jacqueline went into the gloomy, darkened drawing-room to play, Freke followed her. Jacqueline sat down, and began some short familiar piece, but she could not render it. She missed notes, became confused, and finally gave up and left the piano in mortification.

“It is because you are here,” she said to Freke, with a child’s resentment.

“Is it, little girl?” he asked.

He was sitting quite at the other end of the room and did not come near her, but something in his tone made Jacqueline halt, and brought the ever-ready blood into her cheeks. Freke, after a moment, rose and sauntered toward her. As he came up to her he took a stray lock of hair that had escaped, in curly perversity, from the comb; and, just as he stood with it in his fingers, the door opened and Simon Peter announced:

“Walk right in, Marse George. Mistis, she countin’ de tuckeys in de coop, but Miss Judy, she be ’long pres’n’y. Hi! Here Miss Jacky!”

Throckmorton walked in. His eye, which was as quick as a hawk’s, caught the whole thing in an instant, and a sort of jealousy sprang into life. Of course, he did not display the smallest symptom of it. He shook hands pleasantly with Jacqueline, and also with Freke, whom he had met several times. With his easy, worldly judgment, he by no means ranked Freke as the chief of sinners, but, without regarding him as a model citizen, found him extremely good company, which Freke certainly was. Jacqueline looked painfully embarrassed, but Freke’s coolness was simply indomitable. The two men made conversation naturally enough, while Jacqueline, awkwardly silent, sat and twisted the unlucky lock of hair in her fingers until a diversion was created by Judith’s entrance, with little Beverley clinging to her skirts. A faint, girlish blush came into Judith’s face when she met Throckmorton; and for his part he felt always the charm, the refinement, the sprightliness, more piquant because subdued, that exhaled like a perfume wherever Judith was. Beverley made for Throckmorton, and, before his mother could interpose a warning hand, was perched on the arm of Throckmorton’s chair, whence both of them defied her. Jacqueline made but one remark. She asked Throckmorton, timidly:

“How is young Mr. Throckmorton?”

At which the major scowled, but responded carelessly that Jack was all right, as far as he knew.

Young Mr. Throckmorton! and from those lovely lips!

Presently there was a grinding of wheels, and a commotion at the front door.

“Mrs. Sherrard, I know!” said Judith. “She always begins her salutations at the gate.”

Sounds were distinguishable.

“Mistis be mighty glad ter see you an’ Marse Edmun’. She down at de fattenin’-coop countin’ de tuckeys, kase we didn’t have no luck wid de tuckey-aigs lars’ season, an’ de wuffless hen-tuckeys—”

So much for Simon Peter, when Delilah’s voice broke in:

“Miss Kitty, ’twan’ de hen-tuckeys ’tall. Ef de gobblers wuz ter take turns, like de pigeons, a-settin’ on de aigs—”

“I allus did think dem he-pigeons look like de foolishest critters I ever see a-settin’ on de nes’ while de she-pigeons hoppin’ roun’ de groun’ ’stid o’ mindin’ dey business—”

“You are right, Simon Peter,” answered Mrs. Sherrard, still invisible. “I wonder that Delilah hasn’t profited by Mrs. Temple’s example. You’ve got visitors. Whose hat is this?”

“Marse George Throckmorton’s an’ Marse Temple Freke’s. I gwi’ tell mistis you here. Marse c’yarn leave de charmber yet, he gout so bad.”

Mrs. Sherrard marched in, followed by Edmund Morford. She wore her most commanding and hostile air. She had pooh-poohed Mrs. Temple’s dread of Freke, but she meant to give him to understand that his goings on, and particularly his matrimonial difficulties, were perfectly well known in the Severn neighborhood, and properly reprobated. So she shook hands all around, followed by the Rev. Edmund, who never trusted himself at Barn Elms, with those two pretty young women, alone and unprotected.

“I understand you have bought Wareham,” remarked Mrs. Sherrard, tartly, to Freke.

“I have,” answered Freke, very mildly.

“You’ll repent it.”

“Not if you make yourself as agreeable as you ought,” answered Freke.

The impudence of this tickled Mrs. Sherrard.

“I hear you are an entertaining fellow,” she said. “Come and talk to me.”

Just then Mrs. Temple entered, but Mrs. Sherrard kept fast hold of Freke. In half an hour he had won her over. Judith, responding with an intelligent glance to a rather cynical smile on Throckmorton’s part, saw it. Not satisfied with winning Mrs. Sherrard over, Freke applied himself to Morford, and that excellent but guileless person fell an instant victim to Freke’s tact and power. Mrs. Sherrard was so pleased with her morning’s visit, that she invited them all over to Turkey Thicket to spend the following Thursday evening.

CHAPTER VI.

The very next evening after Mrs. Sherrard’s visit, Freke appeared in the dusky drawing-room, where Jacqueline sat crouched over the fire, and Judith, with her child in her arms, sang him quaint Mother Goose melodies. When Freke came within the fire’s red circle of light, Judith observed that he had a violin and bow under his arm. Jacqueline jumped up delightedly.

“Oh, oh! do you know any music?”

“I can fiddle a little,” answered Freke, smiling.

He settled himself, and, in the midst of the deep silence of twilight in the country, began a concerto of Brahms. The first movement, an allegro, he played with a dainty, soft trippingness that was fit for fairies dancing by moonlight. The next, a scherzo, was full of tender suggestiveness—a dream told in music. The third movement was deeper, more tragic, full of sorrow and wailing. As Freke drew the bow across the G-string, he would bring out tones as deep as the ’cello, while suddenly the sharp cry of the treble would cut into the somber depths of the basso like the shriek of a soul in torment. A melody like a wandering spirit appeared out of the deep harmonies, and lost, yet ever found, would make itself heard with a sweet insistence, only to be swallowed up in a tempest of sound, like a bird lost in a storm. And presently there was an abatement, then a calm, and the music died, literally, amid the twilight dusk and gloom.

As Freke, with strange eyes, and his bow suspended, tremblingly, as if waiting for the spirit to return, ceased, there was a perfect silence. Jacqueline, who had never heard anything like it in her life, and who, all unknown to herself, was singularly susceptible to music, gazed at Freke as the magician who had made her dream dreams, and after a while cried out:

“Why do you play like that? I never heard anybody play so before.”

In answer, Freke again smiled, and played a wild Hungarian dance, fit for the dancing of bacchantes, so full of barbaric clash and rhythm, that Jacqueline suddenly sprang up and began to dance around the chairs and tables. Freke half turned to glance at her; he retarded the time, and softened the tones, when Jacqueline, too, danced slowly and dreamily—until presently, with a storm and a rush of music, fortissimo and prestissimo, and a resounding blare of chords that sounded like the shouts of a victorious army, he stopped and lay back in his chair, still smiling.

But, although Judith had twice Jacqueline’s knowledge of music, with all her feeling for it, Freke was piqued to see that she did not for a moment confound his music with his personality. She seemed to take a malicious pleasure in complimenting him glibly, which is the last snub to an artist. Freke was so vexed by her indifference, that he began to play cats mewing and dogs barking, on his fiddle, to frighten little Beverley, who looked at him with wide, scared eyes.

“Never mind, my darling,” cried Judith, laughing. “Be a brave little boy—only girls are scared at such things.”

Beverley, thus exhorted, summoned up his courage and proposed to get grandfather’s sword to defend himself. Judith’s laughter, the defiant light in her eyes, the passionate kiss she gave the boy as a reward for his bravery, annoyed Freke. His vanity as an artist, however, was consoled by hearing Simon Peter’s voice, in an awed and solemn whisper from the door, through which his woolly head was just visible in the surrounding darkness:

“I ’clar’ ter God, dat fiddle is got evils in it. I hear some on ’em hollerin’ an’ cryin’ fur ter git out, an’ some on ’em larfin’ an’ jumpin’. Marse Temple, dem is spirits in dat fiddle. I knows it.”

“They are, indeed; and, if I go down to the grave-yard at midnight and play, all the dead and gone Temples will rise out of their graves and dance around in their grave-clothes. Do you hear that?” said Freke, gravely.

“Lord God A’mighty!” yelled Simon Peter, “I gwi’ sleep wid a sifter” (a sieve) “over my hade ev’y night arter dis. Sifters keeps away de evils, kase dey slips th’u de holes.” And, sure enough, a sieve was hung up over Simon Peter’s bed that very night, with a rabbit’s foot as an additional safeguard, and a bunch of peacock’s feathers over the fireplace was ruthlessly thrown into the fire to propitiate “de evils.”

When Thursday evening came, General Temple was high and dry with the gout, and Mrs. Temple, of course, could not leave him alone to fight it out with Delilah.

“Ole marse, you gwi’ keep on havin’ de gout twell you w’yar a ole h’yar foot in yo’ pocket. I done tole you so, an’ I ain’ feerd ter keep on tellin’ you so,” was Delilah’s Job-like advice.

“That’s true,” snapped the general. “Gad, if I had had a thousand men in my brigade as little ‘feerd’ as you, I’ll be damned if I ever would have surrendered at Appomattox! God forgive me for swearing.”

“I hope and pray He will, my darling husband,” responded Mrs. Temple, with calm piety.

Jacqueline was in a fever of delight, as she always was when there was any prospect of going from home. She danced up and down, romped with little Beverley, and, hugging him, told him in a laughing whisper that she would see “somebody” at Turkey Thicket, and “somebody had beautiful black eyes, and was only twenty-two years old.”

Judith, too, felt that pleasurable excitement of which she began to be less and less ashamed. A few words dropped meaningly by Throckmorton, full of that sound sense which distinguished him, made her look differently at life. His philosophy was not Mrs. Temple’s. He reminded Judith that we should accept peace and tranquillity thankfully, and that it was no sin to be happy; and everything that Throckmorton said commended itself to Judith. For the first time in her narrow and secluded life she enjoyed with him the pleasure of being as clever as she wanted to be. He was no timid soul, like Edmund Morford, to fear a rival in a woman. It never occurred to Throckmorton to feel jealous of any woman’s wit. One of his greatest charms to Judith was that he was not in the least afraid of her. Her quick feminine humor, her natural acuteness, her knack of pretty expression in speech and writing, appeared in their true light, as mere accomplishments, contrasted with Throckmorton’s firm and masculine mind. The conviction of his mental grasp, his will-power, all that goes to make a man fitted to command a woman, had in it a subtile attraction for Judith, like the spell that beauty casts over a man. He was the only man in all her surroundings whose calm superiority over her was perfectly plain to her. It was only necessary for him to express an opinion, that Judith did not at once see its force. She sometimes differed courteously with him; but it began soon to be a perilous pleasure to her to find that usually Throckmorton was infinitely wiser, more liberal, more just than herself.

When the Thursday evening came, only Judith, Jacqueline, and Freke were to go. It had turned bitterly cold. Simon Peter, sitting in solitary magnificence on the box, handled the ribbons over the Kentucky horses, who dashed along so briskly that the carriage, which was in the last stage of “befo’ the war” decrepitude, threatened to tumble to pieces and drop them all in the road.

Going along, Jacqueline sat back in the carriage, very quiet and silent. Freke, with his back to the horses, talked to Judith. Occasionally in the darkness, by a passing gleam, he could see Jacqueline’s eyes shining.

“What do you think of Major Throckmorton,” he asked Judith.

Although not versed in knowledge of the world, Judith was not devoid of self-possession. The question, though, embarrassed her a little.

“I—I—think he is most interesting, kind—and—”

“Military men are, as a rule, rather narrow, don’t you think?”

“I never saw enough to judge. I should think they ought to be the other way.”

“Every time I see Throckmorton, the consciousness comes to me that I have seen him before—seen him under some tragical and unusual circumstances. If I didn’t know that those who have good consciences, like myself, should be above superstition, I should say that in some previous state of being I had known him; however, I am too strictly orthodox in my beliefs to tolerate such notions. But some time or other—perhaps to-night—I intend to find out from Throckmorton himself if we haven’t had the pleasure of meeting in another cycle or state of being. There is, by the way, an ineffable impudence in Throckmorton returning to this county now.”

Judith suspected that Freke’s peroration was made with the intention of provoking a reply.

They were driving along an open piece of the road, and it was comparatively light in the carriage, although there was no moon. Freke glancing up to see the cause of Judith’s silence, caught the gleam of her white teeth in a broad smile. She was laughing at him. It certainly was delicious to hear Temple Freke commenting on anybody’s having impudence in returning to the county. Freke, who hated to be laughed at, promised himself he would be avenged. “I’ll make you wince, my lady!” he thought to himself. Presently, though, Judith said, in a tone with a sharpness in it, like one who has been wounded:

“I can’t imagine anybody applying the word impudence to Major Throckmorton. He is very reserved—very dignified.”

“Throckmorton, I see, has an advocate.—And little Cousin Jacky, what do you think of the other Jacky—Jacky Throckmorton?”

“I think he’s perfectly delightful,” assented Jacqueline, after a pause.

Freke said no more about the Throckmortons. The women were evidently against him there; and soon they were driving up to the door at Turkey Thicket, and going up the hall stairs to take off their wraps, very much as on that last evening, when Mrs. Sherrard took occasion to rehabilitate Throckmorton in the good graces of the county people, as she was now trying to do with Freke.

When Judith and Jacqueline came down the stairs, Freke met them at the foot. Jacqueline had pleaded hard to wear a white dress, but Mrs. Temple was inexorable. She might catch cold; consequently, she wore a little prim, Quakerish gown of gray. Judith, as usual, was stately in black.

Throckmorton was standing on the rug before the drawing-room fire, talking gravely with Mrs. Sherrard. Edmund Morford was there and Dr. Wortley, who, with Jack Throckmorton, constituted the company. Mrs. Sherrard drew Judith into the conversation that she had been carrying on with Throckmorton. He said to Judith:

“I will continue what I was saying—but I assure you it is something I could speak of to but few people. It is this absolute barring out on the part of the county people toward me. Not a soul except Mrs. Sherrard and Mrs. Temple has asked me to break bread. I thought I knew Virginians—I thought them the kindest, easiest, least angular people in the world; but, upon my soul, anything like this cold and deliberate ostracism I never witnessed! Why, half the county is related to me—and I’ve been to school with every man in it—and yet, I am a pariah!”

“You don’t look at it from their point of view,” replied Mrs. Sherrard, with more patience than was her wont. “Think how these people have suffered. You see yourself, never was there such ruin wrought, and then remember that you are associated with that ruin. Can’t you fancy the dull and silent resentment, the cold anger, with which they must regard all—”

“Blasted Yankees?” cheerfully remarked Throckmorton, recovering his spirits a little.

“But you know,” said Mrs. Sherrard, whose ideas on some subjects were rudimentary, but speaking kindly though positively, “you mustn’t wear your uniform down here.”

Throckmorton laughed rather harshly.

“As I’m not going to be married or buried, I can’t see what chance I would have to wear it. But what you say disposes me to put on my full-dress uniform, with sword and chapeau, and wear it to church on Sunday.”

Then Mrs. Sherrard went off after her latest passion, Temple Freke, and left Judith and Throckmorton standing together.

“I think I understand you,” said Judith, with her pretty air of diffidence. “But, as you know, the people here have one principle which stands for honor, and you have another. You have got power and—and—victory out of your principle, and we have got nothing but ruin and defeat and wretchedness out of our principle. How can you hold us to a strict account?”

“I do not—God knows I do not!—but I want a little human kindness. I get it from a few. Dr. Wortley, who was my tutor at my grandfather’s, and has licked me a hundred times—and Morford, and the families at Turkey Thicket and Barn Elms—but none of them, I think,” continued Throckmorton, looking into Judith’s eyes with admiration, “exactly understand how I feel as well as you. What kept me in the army was, as you say, a principle of honor. It was like a knife in me, every Southern officer who resigned. I respected them, because I knew, as only the naval and military men knew, that they were giving up not only their future and their children’s future, for what they thought right, but that they knew the overwhelming odds against them. I don’t believe any one of them really expected success—they knew too much—it was a sacrifice most disinterested. I could not go with them; but I had to face as much obloquy among my people by staying in the army as they had to face in going out. But I swear I never gave one thought to the advantage to me of staying where I was! I stayed because I could not, as a man of honor, do otherwise, I thought my own people would recognize this—that by this time the bitterness would be over.”

“Never mind,” said Judith, with a heavenly smile, “it will come—it will come.”

A little later, Mrs. Sherrard whispered to Throckmorton:

“Are not my two beauties from Barn Elms sweet creatures?”

“Very,” answered Throckmorton, a dark flush showing under his tan and sunburn. “Little Jacqueline is a charming creature.”

“Oh, pooh! Jacqueline. You mean Judith.”

“Mrs. Beverley is most dignified, charming, and interesting; but little Miss Jacky—”

“I should think she would be a nice playmate for your Jack,” remarked Mrs. Sherrard.

Throckmorton looked awkward, not to say foolish. Had he forgotten his forty-four years, his iron-gray hair, all the scars of life? Jacqueline and Jack were inseparable from the start, and their two heads were close together on the deep, old-fashioned sofa, at that very moment.

“The major stole a march on me the other day, going over to Barn Elms,” remarked Jack, confidentially. “However, I’ll get even with him yet.”

“Oh, how can you talk so about your own father?”

“Why shouldn’t I talk so about my own father?”

“Because it’s not right.”

“Look here, Miss Jacky. Nobody thinks as much of the major as I do—he’s the kindest, noblest, gamest chap alive—but you see, I’m a man, and he’s a man. When he got married at twenty-one, he took the risk of having a son in the field before he was ready to quit himself.”

“Do you—do you remember your mother?” asked Jacqueline, in a low voice.

“No,” answered Jack, fixing his dark eyes seriously on Jacqueline. “I have a miniature of her that my father gave me when I was twenty-one. He keeps her picture in his room, and on the anniversary of her death he spends the day alone. Once in a great while he has talked to me about her.”

Jacqueline glanced at Throckmorton with a new interest. He was still talking to Judith. The pleased look on the major’s face aroused the mischievous devil in Jack. In five minutes Jacqueline, to her disgust and disappointment, found herself talking to Dr. Wortley, while Jack had established himself on the other side of Judith. Neither Throckmorton nor Judith was pleased to see him.

“You ought to hear my father tell about some of his campaigns ’way back in the fifties,” remarked Jack. “It’s a good while ago, but the major isn’t sensitive about his age like some men.”

Perhaps the major was not, but Jack’s observation was received in grim silence.

“I am sure Major Throckmorton can tell us a great many interesting things,” answered Judith, smiling involuntarily—“particularly to us who lead such quiet lives, and who know so little. I sometimes wonder how I shall ever be able to bring up my boy; I have so few ideas, and they seem to be all rusting away.”

“I thought you were a great reader,” said Throckmorton.

“I like to read, but—”

“My father is a Trojan of a reader,” continued Jack, “and his eyesight is really wonderful.”

At this the major, with the cast in his eye very obvious, rose and walked over to where Jacqueline was sitting. Jack had accomplished his object, and ran his father out of the field. But Judith felt a sense of bitter disappointment. However, with the sweetness of her nature, she overcame her resentful feelings toward Jack, and, in spite of his boyish disposition to make people uncomfortable, really began to like him.

Throckmorton, though, was not ill pleased on the whole. It was by an effort that he had kept away from Jacqueline until then. But, after talking with her awhile, he was not quite so well satisfied. Her childishness was pretty, and the acuteness of her remarks sometimes surprised him, but there was nothing to her—she talked and thought about herself. Throckmorton tried once or twice to get her into the channel of rational conversation, but Jacqueline rebelled. She acknowledged with a pretty smile that she hated books, and that she was poor company for herself. Throckmorton felt a tinge of pity for her. What would become of her twenty years hence—so pretty, so charming, so inconsequent?

Freke had in the mean time completed his conquest of Mrs. Sherrard. Presently he went to the piano and trolled out songs in a rich barytone, playing his own accompaniments. This musical gift was a revelation to Mrs. Sherrard. It was not comparable, though, to his violin-playing. Nevertheless, it was enough to turn Jacqueline’s head a little. Freke sang a sentimental song, with a tender refrain, and every time he sang this refrain he cast a glance at Jacqueline.

Gradually the blood mounted to her face, until, when he stopped, she was as rosy as the morning. Then Freke sat down by her, and after that Jacqueline had no eyes for anybody else—not even Jack.

Throckmorton saw it, with a strong disgust for Freke, and with that same strange pang of jealousy he had felt before. Judith’s angry disapproval burned within her, but she made no attempt to circumvent Freke until, looking around after a while, she missed him and Jacqueline both.

Judith, watching her opportunity, slipped out into the hall, and there found the culprits. Jacqueline made a little futile effort to pretend that they were looking at some prints by the light of a solitary kerosene-lamp; but Freke, who at least had no pretence about him, held on boldly to Jacqueline’s hand, until she wrenched it away.

“Jacqueline, dear,” said Judith, trying to speak naturally, “it is cold out here; come in!”

“I’m not cold,” answered Jacqueline after a pause.

“But it is not polite to run away like this,” urged Judith, casting an angry look at Freke, who, with folded arms, was whistling softly.

“I can’t help that, Judith,” answered Jacqueline, pettishly. “Why do you want me in that stiff drawing-room with old Dr. Wortley and Mrs. Sherrard, and—”

“But Jacqueline, I want you!”

There was no mistaking that tone.

“Go along, Jacky,” said Freke, with cheerful submission. “You’ll be liable to catch some dreadful moral complaint if you breathe the same atmosphere with me too long. I am a sinner of high degree, I am.”

Jacqueline turned and sullenly followed Judith back, while Freke, smiling and unruffled, walked by her side. And then supper was served, but Jacqueline was perfectly distrait and could not keep her eyes off Freke, who was the life and soul of the party. The supper was after the Virginia order—very good—and so profuse it could not all be got on the table.

On the drive home there was perfect silence. Freke made one or two observations to Judith, but her cold silence convinced him that it was useless. He was not afraid of her, but he saw no good in pretending to placate her. When they reached Barn Elms and were standing in the cold hall, Judith said to Jacqueline:

“Go on. I shall be up in a moment.”

“I’ll wait for you,” replied Jacqueline, doggedly.

“You may wait, but I wish to speak to Freke privately. I shall take him into the drawing-room.”

At this, Jacqueline went slowly and unwillingly up the stairs.

Judith picked up the lamp and went into the dark drawing-room. The fire still smoldered dimly in the great fireplace. Freke took up the tongs and made a vigorous attack on the fire, and in two minutes the flames were leaping around the brass firedogs. Then he settled himself comfortably in the corner of the sofa.

Judith, although her determination was made, yet felt timid, and her heart beat.

“What excuse can you give,” she asked in an unsteady voice, “for your behavior with that child to-night?”

“None whatever,” answered Freke, coolly. “I am not bound to justify myself to you, nor do I admit there was anything to be excused.”

“You are right in saying you are not bound to justify yourself to me,” said Judith; “but can you justify yourself to her father and mother? You see how she is. You know what they—what we all—think of you. You are a married man, remember.”

“Am I?” asked Freke, laughing. “By Jove, I wish I knew whether I was or not!”

“What right have you to fill Jacqueline’s head with dreams and notions? The child was well enough until you came. Why can’t you go away and leave her in peace?”

Freke smiled at this. “I don’t feel like going away,” he said, “and particularly now that I see you wish me to go. I have rather different plans in view now that I have bought property here. It doesn’t look well for a man to be cast off by his relations; and I intend to have, if I can, the backing of the Temples.”

“But how long, think you, could you stay, if the child’s mother knew of your behavior to-night?”

“That I don’t know. But I wish to stay, Madam Judith; and, since you are so prudish, I will promise you not look at Jacqueline again. Will that satisfy you?”

“I will first see how you keep your promise. But I warn you, Freke, if you remain here much longer, I shall use all the influence in my power to get you out of this house. You are no advantage to the child. It would be better for her if you went away and never came back.”

Freke had been sitting all this time, while Judith, standing up, pale and disdainful, spoke to him. But now he rose.

“Now,” he said with sudden seriousness, “since you have expressed that hospitable intention concerning me, let me tell you something—something very interesting, that I have suspected for some time, but only found out to-night. You remember I told you of that death-struggle of Beverley’s with an officer—how they rolled over and over and fought.”

“Yes—yes—”

“And how the officer’s horse, held by the bridle, I thought every moment would trample—”

“Yes—yes—yes!” cried Judith.

“Well,” said Freke, coming up close to her, “Throckmorton was that officer!”

Freke had meant to give her one fierce pang; it was a delicious thing to him to strike her through Throckmorton; but he was quite unprepared for the result, for Judith, although young and strong, after standing for a moment gazing at Freke with wild eyes, swayed and without a sound dropped to the floor in a dead faint.

Freke, cursing his own folly, ran to her and called loudly. His voice echoed through the midnight silence of the house. It brought Mrs. Temple, frightened and half dressed, into the room, followed by Delilah, struggling into her petticoats, and Simon Peter, scratching his wool and but half awake.

Freke had raised Judith on his arm. Something strange, like pity, of which he knew but little, came to him as he looked at her pallid face.

“You git ’way, Marse Temple,” said Delilah, with authority. “Me an’ mistis kin manage dis heah.—Hi, Miss Judy! Open yo’ eyes, honey, an’ tell what de matter wid you.”

Mrs. Temple, who never lost her head in emergencies, in five minutes had Judith in a fair way of coming to herself. Freke said truthfully that he never was so surprised in his life as when Judith fell over. Mrs. Temple could not account for it either, and proposed to leave the solution to Dr. Wortley when he should be sent for in the morning. In a few minutes more Judith came to and sat up. Almost her first conscious glance fell on Freke. She gazed at him steadily, and in an instant the conviction that what he had said was mere wanton cruelty came to her. Freke himself avoided her glance uneasily.

“Honey, tell yo’ ole mammy wh’yar hu’ts you,” pleaded Delilah, anxious to take charge of the case in advance of Dr. Wortley.

“Nowhere at all. I only want to get to bed.—Mother, I hope father wasn’t waked.”

“My dear, nothing short of an explosion would wake him.”

Mrs. Temple wisely refrained from tormenting Judith with questions. Her fainting-fit was certainly unaccountable, but Mrs. Temple remembered once or twice in her own early days when she had done the same thing. So she merely gave Judith some brandy-and-water, and in a few minutes, with Delilah’s help, got her on the old-fashioned sofa.

While Mrs. Temple and Delilah were stirring about the room, shutting up for the night and raking the fire down, Freke came up to Judith. Revenge was familiar to him, but not revenge on women, and remorse was altogether new to him.

“What I told you,” he began, awkwardly, “the facts in the case—”

“Say no more about it; I don’t believe you!” answered Judith in a low voice, but scornful beyond description.

Freke’s rage blazed up under that tone.

“You don’t believe me? Then I’ll make Throckmorton tell you himself. I can find it out from him without his suspecting it, and I’ll make him tell you how he killed your husband.”